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‘What did you say the address was?’ asked Rupert of his mother.
‘Seven Cheviot Place.’
‘Whew!’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I say, this is exciting. That’s the house Lord Listerdale disappeared from.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Mrs St Vincent doubtfully.
‘Positive. He’s got a lot of other houses all over London, but this is the one he lived in. He walked out of it one evening saying he was going to his club, and nobody ever saw him again. Supposed to have done a bunk to East Africa or somewhere like that, but nobody knows why. Depend upon it, he was murdered in that house. You say there’s a lot of panelling?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs St Vincent faintly: ‘but –’
Rupert gave her no time. He went on with immense enthusiasm.
‘Panelling! There you are. Sure to be a secret recess somewhere. Body’s been stuffed in there and has been there ever since. Perhaps it was embalmed first.’
‘Rupert, dear, don’t talk nonsense,’ said his mother.
‘Don’t be a double-dyed idiot,’ said Barbara. ‘You’ve been taking that peroxide blonde to the pictures too much.’
Rupert rose with dignity – such dignity as his lanky and awkward age allowed, and delivered a final ultimatum.
‘You take that house, Mums. I’ll ferret out the mystery. You see if I don’t.’
Rupert departed hurriedly, in fear of being late at the office.
The eyes of the two women met.
‘Could we, Mother?’ murmured Barbara tremulously. ‘Oh! if we could.’
‘The servants,’ said Mrs St Vincent pathetically, ‘would eat, you know. I mean, of course, one would want them to – but that’s the drawback. One can so easily – just do without things – when it’s only oneself.’
She looked piteously at Barbara, and the girl nodded.
‘We must think it over,’ said the mother.
But in reality her mind was made up. She had seen the sparkle in the girl’s eyes. She thought to herself: ‘Jim Masterton must see her in proper surroundings. This is a chance – a wonderful chance. I must take it.’
She sat down and wrote to the agents accepting their offer.
‘Quentin, where did the lilies come from? I really can’t buy expensive flowers.’
‘They were sent up from King’s Cheviot, madam. It has always been the custom here.’
The butler withdrew. Mrs St Vincent heaved a sigh of relief. What would she do without Quentin? He made everything so easy. She thought to herself, ‘It’s too good to last. I shall wake up soon, I know I shall, and find it’s been all a dream. I’m so happy here – two months already, and it’s passed like a flash.’
Life indeed had been astonishingly pleasant. Quentin, the butler, had displayed himself the autocrat of 7 Cheviot Place. ‘If you will leave everything to me, madam,’ he had said respectfully. ‘You will find it the best way.’
Each week, he brought her the housekeeping books, their totals astonishingly low. There were only two other servants, a cook and a housemaid. They were pleasant in manner, and efficient in their duties, but it was Quentin who ran the house. Game and poultry appeared on the table sometimes, causing Mrs St Vincent solicitude. Quentin reassured her. Sent up from Lord Listerdale’s country seat, King’s Cheviot, or from his Yorkshire moor. ‘It has always been the custom, madam.’
Privately Mrs St Vincent doubted whether the absent Lord Listerdale would agree with those words. She was inclined to suspect Quentin of usurping his master’s authority. It was clear that he had taken a fancy to them, and that in his eyes nothing was too good for them.
Her curiosity aroused by Rupert’s declaration, Mrs St Vincent had make a tentative reference to Lord Listerdale when she next interviewed the house-agent. The white-haired old gentleman had responded immediately.
Yes, Lord Listerdale was in East Africa, had been there for the last eighteen months.
‘Our client is rather an eccentric man,’ he had said, smiling broadly. ‘He left London in a most unconventional manner, as you may perhaps remember? Not a word to anyone. The newspapers got hold of it. There were actually inquiries on foot at Scotland Yard. Luckily news was received from Lord Listerdale himself from East Africa. He invested his cousin, Colonel Carfax, with power of attorney. It is the latter who conducts all Lord Listerdale’s affairs. Yes, rather eccentric, I fear. He has always been a great traveller in the wilds – it is quite on the cards that he may not return for years to England, though he is getting on in years.’
‘Surely he is not so very old,’ said Mrs St Vincent, with a sudden memory of a bluff, bearded face, rather like an Elizabethan sailor, which she had once noticed in an illustrated magazine.
‘Middle-aged,’ said the white-haired gentleman. ‘Fifty-three, according to Debrett.’
This conversation Mrs St Vincent had retailed to Rupert with the intention of rebuking that young gentleman.
Rupert, however, was undismayed.
‘It looks fishier than ever to me,’ he had declared. ‘Who’s this Colonel Carfax? Probably comes into the title if anything happens to Listerdale. The letter from East Africa was probably forged. In three years, or whatever it is, this Carfax will presume death, and take the title. Meantime, he’s got all the handling of the estate. Very fishy, I call it.’
He had condescended graciously to approve the house. In his leisure moments he was inclined to tap the panelling and make elaborate measurements for the possible location of a secret room, but little by little his interest in the mystery of Lord Listerdale abated. He was also less enthusiastic on the subject of the tobacconist’s daughter. Atmosphere tells.
To Barbara the house had brought great satisfaction. Jim Masterton had come home, and was a frequent visitor. He and Mrs St Vincent got on splendidly together, and he said something to Barbara one day that startled her.
‘This house is a wonderful setting for your mother, you know.’
‘For Mother?’
‘Yes. It was made for her! She belongs to it in an extraordinary way. You know there’s something queer about this house altogether, something uncanny and haunting.’
‘Don’t get like Rupert,’ Barbara implored him. ‘He is convinced that the wicked Colonel Carfax murdered Lord Listerdale and hid his body under the floor.’
Masterton laughed.
‘I admire Rupert’s detective zeal. No, I didn’t mean anything of that kind. But there’s something in the air, some atmosphere that one doesn’t quite understand.’
They had been three months in Cheviot Place when Barbara came to her mother with a radiant face.
‘Jim and I – we’re engaged. Yes – last night. Oh, Mother! It all seems like a fairy tale come true.’
‘Oh, my dear! I’m so glad – so glad.’
Mother and daughter clasped each other close.
‘You know Jim’s almost as much in love with you as he is with me,’ said Barbara at last, with a mischievous laugh.
Mrs St Vincent blushed very prettily.
‘He is,’ persisted the girl. ‘You thought this house would make such a beautiful setting for me, and all the time it’s really a setting for you. Rupert and I don’t quite belong here. You do.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense, darling.’
‘It’s not nonsense. There’s a flavour of enchanted castle about it, with you as an enchanted princess and Quentin as – as – oh! a benevolent magician.’
Mrs St Vincent laughed and admitted the last item.
Rupert received the news of his sister’s engagement very calmly.
‘I thought there was something of the kind in the wind,’ he observed sapiently.
He and his mother were dining alone together; Barbara was out with Jim.
Quentin placed the port in front of him, and withdrew noiselessly.
‘That’s a rum old bird,’ said Rupert, nodding towards the closed door. ‘There’s something odd about him, you know, something –’
‘Not fishy?’
interrupted Mrs St Vincent, with a faint smile.
‘Why, Mother, how did you know what I was going to say?’ demanded Rupert in all seriousness.
‘It’s rather a word of yours, darling. You think everything is fishy. I suppose you have an idea that it was Quentin who did away with Lord Listerdale and put him under the floor?’
